50 Maddox Street London W1

Choosing our Offices

After some searching, I  found a suitable Headquarters for my new Insurance Brokerage. This was at 50 Maddox Street and was a commercial property owned by the Corporation of London: it was a good address in London’s West End within easy reach of the Central Line and Jubilee Line underground stations of Oxford Circus and Bond Street respectively.  The rent was reasonably low and the property in reasonable condition.

I started with the top floor of the building, which was essentially a house in the period style with 5 floors and a basement, each floor consisting of one large room overlooking the street and one other smaller room at the back – which had no view as such! There was no lift – a slight drawback – and stairs connected the first and subsequent floors via a secure front door, with an intercom system for each floor. When I  started, there were other tenants on the first three floors, and the ground floor (with street frontage) and basement was occupied by an upmarket Hair Stylist called Carvers: I see that the business name with owner Vivienne Baum remains to this day, but Carvers 2020 has a different clientele.

The small room on the top floor became my personal office, and the larger room was “open plan” for my small team at the time and a waiting room area for customers. As the business grew, I gradually took over all the upper floors, with our admin staff and Reception Area and Boardroom on the first floor, and the second and third floors available for the expanding sales team. We used a Panasonic telephone system to interconnect between floors and make outside calls.

Close by were Hanover Square Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square,  pleasant places to have a walk or relax, and Bond Street and Oxford Street were five minutes on foot. Directly opposite our offices was an Italian Restaurant (unimaginatively) called the “57” but it was an excellent place to have lunch – particularly the menu item known as stuffed chicken with garlic butter , which meant that “after lunch” meetings could be hazardous for other attendees!

At full strength, Noble Warren Investments Ltd had a staff on P.A.Y.E. of three girls – one of whom was also my PA – and a sales team of 20 to 30 sales “commission only” consultants.